love, and madness
by Dialux
Summary: Even monsters can love, and Ozai has never loved anyone more than Ursa. Ursa has always loved another, and she can never forgive Ozai for daring to stand in her beloved's shoes. Third in my Fire Lady Series


Ozai kisses Ursa in a garden of panda-lily blossoms, bruisingly.

They are both firebenders- their skins are hot and feverish, their kisses fierce and unyielding. Tui glitters down on them like a silvered jewel (_Ozai is in love.) _Ursa has painted her lips with vermilion paste; the scarlet slicks over their mouths like a bloodstain.

She tastes like smoke and something bittersweet (_a lifetime later their son will fall in love, and Mai will call it jasmine tea. Ozai is too much his mother's son- breaking everything dear to him- to know this.) _He can smell the wine on her breath, and it reminds him of madness, and beauty, and forever. He doesn't know Ursa (_not yet) _and he knows she doesn't love him _(not yet) _but they have a lifetime _(and more, he hopes) _to understand each other.

* * *

Ursa cannot forgive Ozai.

He stands before her, in Ikem's shoes, and he can never- will never- measure up. His eyes are coppered pennies; even as he mouths kisses along her throat they are dead, even as he proclaims his undying love they are empty. His fingers burn against her collarbone as he presses an indelible bruise, and Ursa wants to scream: "_I am not yours._"

* * *

She takes his heart and shatters it into a million pieces.

Piece by piece (_Ozai is betrayed, angry, hurt) _he takes everything back that she ever loved, until there is nothing left of the princess-queen she once was. He throws away his humanity, too, but he is lying on a plain, defeated by a _(twelve year old) _boy before he knows it.

* * *

When Ursa sees Ozai in his prison cell, he laughs.

The laughter is hysterical, almost mad, but not quite. Ursa knows the jailer looks at her with something approaching pity, that she once loved _(loves) _this broken shell of a man, but she can't quite bring herself to pity him. His eyes gleam with grief, she notes somewhat distantly _(Ozai's always intoxicated her) _but it hardens quickly, and his voice is mocking.

"How the mighty," he sneers cuttingly, as if he was on the throne and she on her knees. "Have fallen."

She doesn't answer, but she knows that she, too, looks worn and broken. Their battles have torn the other down more than built them up; Ozai's victory was on his father's blood and her ashes, and her new life was built on illusion and forgotten dreams. _At least I have hope, _she thinks, bittersweet, and when she walks away into the sunshine she can almost delude herself into believing that the shine is gold-white perfection.

* * *

Ozai dies in a damp prison cell, and no one weeps over his body.

He is abandoned by everyone who ever looked up to him _(I was never all evil, he wants to yell at all those who come to look at him contemptuously. I never was good enough was I? he wants to ask his holier-than-thou son and brother.) _It is only when he hears of Ursa's death that he gives up _(he laughs to keep from crying) _and goes to Koh's lair willingly.

The journey is long and arduous, _(but Ozai has never been a quitter.) _and the hope that, at the end of the road, is the only thing that sustains him.

Ursa waits for him, in the twilight between worlds _(I would walk through the gates of hell for you, he wishes he could have the courage to whisper. But you never wanted a ruined monument. Perfection was what you wanted, and what I could never achieve.) _and for the first time there's no resentment in her eyes. Her hands are warm _(though they should be cold- they're both dead, after all, and the coldness of the afterworld is nothing more than he feared) _and her smile is beautiful. When he reaches her, she tilts her head like an ageless goddess and smiles enigmatically.

Ozai kisses her, and for the first time _(in both life and death) _Ursa kisses him back.

* * *

**Well... all I really have to say is, here's Ursa! After a couple weeks of absolutely no updates (putting up your own backsplash is _such _a pain. Don't do it unless you have to) I figured I should just sit down and do this. And, yes, I know I'm writing romance. To be perfectly honest, my fiance just broke up with me two weeks ago. I am maudlin, and sentimental, and I am damn well going to milk that for all it's worth!**

**But, in reality (my fiance did break up with me, I'm not joking about the part) it's been a long time since I've written romance. As in, since, like, my teenaged years of melodrama and angst... Those self-same years I've spent the better part of my life blocking out so I don't die from sheer embarrassment. Please let me know if it has come out trashy and/or cliche. I am currently looking for a beta, so if you know or are one, please, _please _help me save myself from inflicting horrible fanfics on all my lovely readers.**

**Reviews _do _inspire me... After getting my longest review yet I got started on editing the next chapter of Changing Times yesterday!**

**So keep it up, and enjoy this one while you're at it.**

**-Dialux**


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